All the President's Men and Women: Unfortunately for the Pundits There Is Little to Learn from Harding's Foibles

Anders Hove

"Harding may not have been a great President or even a good one, but he
deserves to be judged on the basis of his actions, not on hearsay and
innuendo." So writes Columbia history graduate student Michael Pierce in
the March 1 issue of The New York Times, under the rather
questionable headline, "Harding Wasn't a Slacker."

Strong stuff indeed. You wouldn't expect Warren G. Harding to many
defenders these days. He has been dead for 75 years, and his legacy is
bereft of ideological fervor or legislative or diplomatic accomplishments.
(He is famous for coining the word "normalcy," but this fact is usually
used to mock rather than extol his memory.) But after Thomas Fleming penned
an inflammatory anti-Harding column in the February 23 issue of The New
York Times, at least a few historians' interest was piqued, and Pierce
was even moved to reply.

"[Fleming] uses the same sort of rumor, hearsay and innuendo to
criticize Harding that many of President Clinton's opponents are using
against him," writes Pierce. Pierce mainly takes issue with Fleming's
discussion of Harding's sexual relations with women other than his wife,
and his alleged passion for golf and poker.

Unfortunately for the points Fleming and counterpart Pierce were trying
to make, history is very complicated, and often does not support quick and
easy judgments. More importantly, it can be dangerous to draw parallels
between current events and the past

"Harding has come to be regarded right, left, and center as the worst
President this country has ever had." That judgment was rendered by Harding
biographer Francis Russell. Writing in 1969, four years before Watergate,
Russell's judgment stands to this day as the worst judgment history can
render on a political figure. Although he was revered by many during his
own time, Harding's reputation was shattered by scandal in the years
following his death in 1923.

Harding is most remembered for his scandals, of which Teapot Dome is the
most notorious. In an interesting parallel to the current Clinton scandal,
Teapot Dome implicated the Interior Department and its head, former senator
and New Mexico political don Albert Fall. Fall had allegedly sold off
invaluable Naval oil reserves to "oil interests" in exchange for kickbacks.
The Teapot Dome investigation dragged on years after Harding's death, and
featured all manner of silly hijinks that could not have been better
contrived to titillate the press of the day. Fall and other witnesses tried
to claim illness to avoid testifying, and they doctored evidence, including
dummy check receipts, to cover their tracks. The Interior Department tried
to snowball the investigation by handing over truckloads of documents, in
the hopes that it would take the Senate years to review them. In one of the
most bizarre twists, unknown individuals tried to frame Senator Burton
Wheeler of Montana, one of the gang's accusers, in a hotel room with a
woman.

Teapot Dome gradually came to ensnare all sorts of other politicians,
including William Gibbs McAdoo, a Californian who was running for president
under the Democratic banner, as well as a clutch of Harding cronies,
including the Attorney General Harry Daugherty. Daugherty and McAdoo
escaped jail terms, but their careers withered.

Teapot Dome was a scandal very much suited for the 1920s. It concerned
one of the central issues of the day, conservation of natural resources.
Harding had pledged support of conservation, thus healing the decades-old
rift between the old-line conservatives he represented and the followers of
former President Theodore Roosevelt. At the crux of Teapot Dome was
bribery, a crime anyone could understand. To use the press jargon of our
own time, Teapot Dome had "legs" - political leaders found it compelling
and the public found it understandable.

Harding's alleged affairs were a different matter. The public knew
nothing of them at the time, and the press and political leaders did
nothing to bring them before the public eye. Nan Britton, Harding's main
accuser, only came forward after his death, when his family refused to help
support the child she claimed the president had fathered. She responded by
writing a book chronicling their affair; refused publication by all
publishing houses, Britton eventually put the work into print by allying
herself with an illustrator of Bibles who was outraged at the way the
Hardings had treated her. Bookstores that had refused to stock it changed
their tune in the bat of an eye as the book, The President's
Daughter, became an instant national bestseller.

The Harding family also worked hard to deny the president's other
alleged tryst with Carrie Phillips. Unlike Britton, Phillips was an elegant
woman who Harding turned to for intellectual stimulation. Believing Harding
would divorce his ailing wife, "Duchess," to marry Phillips, the Republican
National Committee supposedly shipped her and her husband to Germany to
keep the nomination on track. This particular story is probably apocryphal,
but if the RNC didn't protect Harding in this instance, the Harding heirs
did him one better: By launching a million-dollar lawsuit, they prevented
publication of the Harding-Phillips letters which would have proven his
intentions once and for all.

As far as histrionics are concerned, Harding's alleged improprieties are
something of a nullity. The public was unaware of them during his life, and
because of his death, as well as widespread disgust with his administration
in general, the public never really had to come to terms with what the
allegations might mean for the presidency or democracy. During the years
immediately following Harding's death, his name was gradually effaced from
public buildings and structures that had been named for him. In a sense,
Harding was the president who wasn't.

The fact that Clinton's alleged sexual wrongdoing came to light during
(and before) his presidency makes his case unique. The allegations have
been and will continue to be investigated during his own tenure in office.
There is no historical precedent for such an investigation, and no prior
record to help us predict how it will all end up. Like it or not, we must
make our own way through this part of our nation's history.